Virtual-Doug

Time to Sigh

There have been a lot of celebrity deaths lately:  Farah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Karl Mauldin – I’ll even include Billy May.  Many accolades are being written and spoken for them.  The fact that we know who they are means they impacted our lives – at least a little.  I do not begrudge them either their fame or the attention given to their passing.

Then I look at my mother.  She will be 93 next week.

Think of that – ninety three.

Just as celebrities die, so too will my mother die.  Like most people, she is not a celebrity.  Millions will not mourn her passing.  There will be a small story in the obituaries and a small gathering when she rejoins the earth. 

And that too is fine.

Mom made close friends in many places:  up-state New York, Massachusetts, Hialeah, and Port St. Lucie. She didn’t live here in Texas long enough to make friends – she only lived in her little house for six months before she fell, broke her hip, and was hospitalized.  Her dementia has prevented her from making any new relationships.

All those years – all those people Mom knew and worked with and cared for and prayed for and worried about and laughed with and shared meals with.  All those people she loved and loved her.  All those people she shared life with.

Unlike the celebrities, she will die alone.

The Mom Report

 Mom had her other son visit her this week.  Not that she knows who he is.  She has slipped a lot in the last month.

Mom suffered another stroke in May, although we didn’t know it was a stroke until she began to recover.  To be honest, I thought the end had come.  I visited her twice a day for awhile, making email reports to family and close friends.  I made the mental, emotional and spiritual switch to knowing my mother was going to die soon.  Not only was I comfortable with her impending death, but I quietly prayed she go – or, as I told her quietly, it is time for her to be with God and with her husband.

There was nobody more surprised than me to see her sitting in a wheelchair one day.  I have no idea how her thin frail body survived – she had eaten very very little and drunk even less.  I was convinced her body had been shutting down.  But, after a couple of weeks, she was sitting up and trying to grasp the world around her.

But the stroke is evident in her continued decline.  Before, she would light up with recognition when I came in the room, but now she struggles to know who I am.  Before, she would laugh readily, but now she needs something unusual to spark a laugh.  Before, she talked even if most of her words were babble, but now she talks very little.  Before, I seldom found her in bed, but now she is in bed except when the staff puts her in a wheelchair for an hour or so.  Her walker stays in the corner, folded up and unused.

Immediately after her stroke I tried to feed her a little pudding or other easy-to-swallow food, but ½ cup of snack-pack pudding doesn’t provide much nourishment.  The nurses said she ate only a mouthful or two of food and she drank little or nothing.  There is an emotional toll to feeding your own mother – a knowledge that you are doing for her what she did for you as a child.  I didn’t resort to “playing airplane” or other childhood subterfuges to get her to open her mouth, but I remembered to put very small amounts of food in the spoon and not be in a hurry.

Alzheimer’s is a hard teacher.  It has taught me I should not predict the disease.  Only hindsight is accurate, and I believe it is accurate to say Mom has moved on to another stage of dementia.  I cannot be specific in what lies ahead for her – I only know she has moved closer to the inevitable conclusion of the disease.

It was hard watching my brother.  Spending a part of my daily life with Mom as I do, I have had the chance to adjust slowly.  While I am sometimes hit with an occasional bout of depression, for the most part, I just throw an emotional switch when I visit her, then turn the switch back on as I leave.  My brother has had no such luxury – he gets the full jolt of seeing Mom’s decline.

Once upon a time, I was a soldier.  I learned the deep importance of duty – not in a way that implies negativity, but in the positive way of knowing that obedience has its own rewards.  As an old man now, I take great pride in knowing I did my duty as a soldier.  Some day, I hope to take equal pride in having done my loving duty – to honor my mother and my father.

The Mom Report

Think about it, Dear Reader – you are reading a blog that has not been updated since March 19.  That’s almost a month ago, yet you still bring up this silly blog and see if there is something to read.  I know what such laziness says about me, but what does it say about you?

Life has been busy since we returned.  One bit of excitement was the lack of a computer.  My desktop caught a hiccough and I went into withdrawal as I could not process photos.  However, I cannot use that as an excuse for not posting – I can use my laptop for that.

Mom, however, is the same.  I was really quite fearful she would not remember me after a month away – though during my time in Viet Nam, I was very surprised to hear from my sister that Mom remembered her name.  The first day I walked into the nursing home, Mom spotted me and burst into a smile.  Of course, she does not know my name nor my relationship to her, but she knows I am somebody important to her.

One thing also remained the same as when I’d left – she was not wearing her upper dentures.  A couple of days after I came back, she had also sat on her glasses, bending them badly.  I got them repaired for her, but I will spare you the photo I took of her with neither her upper teeth nor glasses.  I ain’t purty, folks.

Instead, here is the matriarch herself.

What else have I been doing since our return from Viet Nam?

That’s a good excuse for another post – hopefully before another month elapses.

Trang, Bear, and Mom

Valentine’s Day is coming up.  Since we will be in New Mexico on that day (more on that later), the Mystery Guest Blogger (MGB) decided to give Mom a little something – something warm and snuggly.  The gift would be a stuffed toy bear.  Because Mom has no concept of dates nor time, giving it to her early made no difference to her.

And, she asked Trang to give it to Mom.

Its interesting to watch Trang with Mom – she is more than just patient with Mom, she seems to be very comfortable in Mom’s presence.  My theory is that the Vietnamese are more used to having old people around.  It is not uncommon to have three – even four – generations living in the same house.  If the MGB and I were traditional Vietnamese, it would not be the two of us caring for Mom, it would be our two youngest grandchildren.  Zach and Elly would have grown up around my mother and cared for her as part of their normal daily life.

When we arrived at Good Samaritan , Mom was asleep.  That is becoming more common.  Mom sleeps a lot now, and is sometimes hard to awaken.  But – she seemed to enjoy the bear once she realized it was hers.

The Mom Report

Mom is no different than the other residents of her nursing home – eating takes a long time. On a number of occasions, I have seen her trying to eat all her food with a knife, but most of the time she uses the correct utensils – its just that moving food from plate to mouth is a laborious and time consuming task. Notice, however, that her plate is empty – even if her body needs a little appetite stimulant to do it. On the day I took this video, I arrived at 11:40 am, just after she was served lunch. It took her over an hour to eat. Eat, sleep, and sit in the front lobby – that’s about the extent of her day.

The Mom Report

I wondered how she would react after my two week absence.  The answer was obvious as soon as I entered the nursing home – she knew me.  Smiling broadly, she was obviously happy to see me, then muttered something about how bad things were.  The two nurses standing nearby gave me a look that said Mom has been a handful lately.

We sat down as we usually do.  Knowing what she would say (or, would not say) I asked about the “bad things.”  She could not articulate anything, of course – just a few moments of meaningless babble.  It didn’t last long, and she soon was happily swatting me in an effort to get me to play.

The nurses verified what I already know – that she often forgets to use her walker.  She is getting increasingly wobbly and I know she will fall soon.  When she falls, she will break something, and that will mean a hospital.  I fear that really will be the end, but it will be a difficult end.  Her appetite is better – I know it waxes and wanes.  The nurses reported days of increasing confusion.  Its the disease.

After I took this photo, I showed it to her on the back of my camera.  I asked “Who is that, Mom?”

She didn’t know.

The Mom Report

It has been July since I’ve posted anything about my mother.  For those who take care of someone afflicted with Alzheimer’s, you know that after awhile there is little to write about.  Daily visits are the same.  There is no variety.  That makes conversation easy as I don’t have to worry if I mentioned something during a previous visit – she has no idea what took place yesterday or the day before.

The disease will fool you, however.  My oldest sister visited recently and took a scrapbook of old photos for Mom to peruse.  Mom recognized photos of her parents and grand parents.  It was a little surprising that she did not recognize Dad.  A few months back, I showed her a photo of herself in her wedding gown.  In a very soft voice, she pointed at the photo and said “That’s me.”  Old memories still reside inside, but the newer the memory, the less likelihood she will remember. 

We are not sure if she truly remembered my other sister or not. There is a tragic irony in my saying that it is a blessing she does not know one of her own children has died.  A week or so after my sister Karen died, I asked Mom if she knew who Karen was.  No – she did not.

That was hard.

Though frail, Mom still gets around okay.  A few days ago I went into her room and found her asleep.  I also noticed her walker was not there.  I found it – she had been visiting a lady across the hall and had left it there.  She can get around without the walker, but her unsteadiness makes a fall inevitable. 

You can blame the haircut on me.  When it gets long, it gets in her eyes and is a nuisance for her caregivers.  I asked that it be cut short as a matter of convenience rather than style.

(Be sure to click on the photo to see a larger version of it.)

There are a number of friends at our church who are also going through the problems of caring for elderly parents.  We were never told about this.  We watched the financial ads on TV showing an elegant couple with silver hair as they planned for their beautiful new retirement home and traveled the world. 

They never told us about daily visits to the nursing home.

The Mom Report: Happy Birthday

The Grande Old Dame turned 92 today.  When asked if she had expected to ever reach that age, she laughed – and said she didn’t think she would ever be 92.

She was walking through the lobby when I came in for my visit, birthday balloons in hand.  The excited look on her face was great – and she positively beamed when one of the nurses gave her a hug.

But the excitement didn’t masked her befuddled mind.  Once we sat down, she went into her usual pattern of mumbling.  Some words came forth, but they made no sense when string together.  But her heart is still there – she kept looking at the balloons tied to her walker – and smiled.

She knew it was special day.

The Mom Report

A few days to get back into the loop of daily life after a long trip – pay bills, water the flowers, and assure the cat we aren’t leaving again.

And back to almost daily trips to see Mom in the nursing home.

I have learned that Alzheimer’s is unpredictable in the short term, even as we all know the inevitable end of the disease in the long term.  On the way to the nursing home to see her, I wondered if she would know who I was.

“Knowing” is a word that needs explanation.  I doubt if she knows my name, and though she recently told one of the nurses I was her husband, she does know I am somebody of importance in her life.  A few months ago she surprised my sisters by remembering their names – but Alzheimer’s teaches you not to expect that again.  Mom consistently indicates she “knows” me by the way she reacts when I visit.  She usually turns on a big smile, usually a laugh, followed by some sort of grumbling something unintelligible about “them.”  Her actions indicate she knows who I am, even if she cannot remember my name or relationship.

And, my fears were validated.

Oh, she was polite and smiled in the way people do when told to smile for the camera.  I tried to “wrassle” with her as I usually do, but she would have none of it.  I have written before about the lessons  she is still teaching me – and the fears I have of how I will handle the day when she truly and finally cannot react to me.

But – that first visit wasn’t the day her memory died completely.  The very next day, I was welcomed with a huge smile, asked “Where have you been?”, and she reached out to hold my hand.  The rest of the visit was spent in make-shift conversation and “wrassling.”  She still enjoys a cup of coffee each morning.

I do notice that she becomes increasingly frail.  I know that a fall will probably result in a broken hip and that may mean she will never get out of bed again.

Guess I’ll have to tell her to eat her veggies and drink her milk – just as she used to tell me.

The Mommy Report

Of course I haven’t posted in awhile.  After the excitement of being in Việt Nam, returning to the mundane life of a retiree leaves little to write about.

Actually – that’s not true.  I’ve been busier than a one-armed paper hanger.

One of the “exciting” things that has happened since our return has been Mom herself.  On Friday, May 16, I got a call from the nursing home telling me that Mom was on the way to the hospital.  An aide had started to check Mom’s blood pressure and found her non-responsive, cold, and clammy.  An ambulance was called and she was taken to a nearby hospital emergency room.  I joined her there; she was quite conscious and awake, but also very overwhelmed by all the activity buzzing around her.  She was poked, prodded, photographed, questioned, and smiled at a lot.  The end result was that “they” were not terribly sure exactly what had happened, but a good bet is that she suffered some sort of mini-stroke that had no lasting effects.  By the afternoon, she went back to Good Samaritan to rest.  The next morning, she was sleeping so hard I was timid about waking her up.  The nurses said they had woken her up to feed her, but otherwise had left her alone.  By Sunday afternoon, she seemed just fine again.

By the most wonderful coincidence, her doctor visited her Sunday afternoon when I was there.  Dr. Vic is our personal physician as well, and he has a “old country doctor” attitude about him.  He checked Mom over, and we discussed the possible ramifications of the mini-stroke (or whatever it was) and basically realized that at being almost 92, such things happen.

You may notice in the picture that Mom’s hair is a bit shaggy.  The Mystery Guest Blogger fixed that up yesterday with a new haircut, designed more for convenience than style.

And – oh yes – Mom still looks forward to “wrassling” with me during my visits.